[英语时文阅读 中英文对照] 《哈佛商业评论》专家论点：管理,并不是一种职业

译言网 | 《哈佛商业评论》专家论点：管理，并不是一种职业

/view/162355/124852

September 30th, 2010

The Big Idea: No, Management Is Not a Profession

《哈佛商业评论》专家论点：

管理，并不是一种职业

by Richard Barker

作者：Richard Barker

It is natural to view management as a profession. Managers’ status is

similar to that of doctors or lawyers, as is their obligation to

contribute to the well-being of society. Managers can also be formally

trained and qualified, notably by earning an MBA. If management is a

profession, the business school is a professional school.

人们一般认为，管理是一种职业，而经理人的地位类似于医生或律师，他们都对社会做出了杰出的贡献。经理人大多进行过系统学习和正规训练，个别优秀的会有MBA学位。如果我们把管理看成是一种职业的话，那么“商学院”就和“职业学校”没有分别了。

That perception has fueled criticism of business schools during the

recent economic crisis. They have come under fire for allegedly failing

in their obligation to educate socially responsible business leaders.

The same perception has informed the schools’ response, which has been

to work toward greater professionalism. Writing in the June 2009 issue

of Harvard Business Review, Joel Podolny, a former dean of the Yale

School of Management, argued, “An occupation earns the right to be a

profession only when some ideals, such as being an impartial counsel,

doing no harm, or serving the greater good, are infused into the conduct

of people in that occupation. In like vein, a school becomes a

professional school only when it infuses those ideals into its

graduates."

这种看法在最近的经济危机中招致了许多批评，责怪那些商学院没有培养出具备社会责任感的商界领袖。同样，越来越职业化的学校也对这种看法做出了回应，耶鲁大学管理学院前院

长Joel Podolny在2009年6月的《哈佛商业评论》上的一篇文章里这样说道：“一种职业之所以被称之为‘职业’，是因为（所提出的）一些想法可以获得公众行为准则的认可，比如一位公正的律师，不仅可以服务大众，而且对社会无害。就像血管一样，只有学生们接受了那些想法，学校才有可能变得更加职业化。”

Podolny is in sympathy with Harvard Business School professors Rakesh

Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who argued in the October 2008 issue of HBR

that it was time to make management a true profession. In their view,

“True professions have codes of conduct, and the meaning and

consequences of those codes are taught as part of the formal education

of their members.” Yet, they wrote, “unlike doctors and lawyers,”

managers don’t “adhere to a universal and enforceable code of

conduct.”

Podolny和哈佛商学院教授Rakesh Khurana与Nitin Nohria的观点一致，他们在发表

于2008年10月《哈佛商业评论》的文章中谈到已经是时候将管理变成一种真正的职业了，在他们看来，“真正的职业有自己的行为准则，而从事这项职业的人一定接受过关于这些准则的含义与重要性的教育”，他们还说，“与医生和律师不同”，经理人不会“局限于那些普遍的、可执行的行为准则”。

These calls to professionalism are hardly new. Writing in the very first

issue of HBR, in 1922, HBS professor John Gurney Callan claimed,

“Business...may be thought of as a profession [and] we may profitably

spend a good deal of time in considering what is the best professional

training for [those] who are to take important executive positions in

the coming generation.”

其实这种关于“职业”的说法早就不新鲜了，在1922年，哈佛商学院教授John Gurney

Callan在《哈佛商业评论》上就声称：“企业管理……或许应该被称为是一种职业，我们要用大部分时间来考虑如何为那些将要身居管理要职的人们提供最好的职业训练！”

A. Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University, was even more

assertive in his 1923 HBR essay “The Profession of Business” (adapted

from his address to the incoming class at HBS the previous September).

He attributed the very creation of HBS to the emergence of business

management as a distinct profession.

哈佛大学校长wrence Lowell在1923年《哈佛商业评论》上的评论文章《企业管理中的职业》（改编自他1922年9月的讲课内容）中的态度更加自信，他认为哈佛商学院独具创造性地把企业管理培养成了一种明确的职业。

In contrast with these views, I will argue that management is not a

profession at all and can never be one. Therefore, business schools are

not professional schools. Moreover, laudable and beguiling though

professional standards and ethics may be, and however appealing

professional status is, hanging the mantle “professional” on business

education fosters inappropriate analysis and misguided prescriptions.

和这些看法相反，我认为管理不是一种职业，并且永远不会是；同时，商学院也是不职业学校；此外，不管如何来判定职业道德的好坏，职业地位有多么诱人，打着“职业化”名头的企业管理教育只会培养出错误的分析与解决办法。

Let’s begin by examining what actually constitutes a profession.

下面，我们先来看一看“职业”是怎么构成的。

What Is a Profession?

什么是职业？

Professions are made up of particular categories of people from whom we

seek advice and services because they have knowledge and skills that we

do not. A doctor, for example, can recommend a course of treatment for

an illness; a lawyer can advise us on a course of legal action. We

cannot make these judgments ourselves—and often we cannot judge the

quality of the advice we receive. The Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow wrote